Timelines are a tricky thing to manage.
Inevitably, given enough time to do so, almost every single tv show or film franchise makes an error in continuity.
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Below are 10+ times that movies and TV shows did just that: forgot their own timelines. They say that the devil is in the details and after going through this list, I’m inclined to agree.
1. Just how old is Albus Dumbledore?
Jude Law plays a young Albus Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them . Supposedly, the film takes place in 1926.
Yet when we see a flashback of Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , only a decade later in the timeline, he appears to have aged at least 25 years?
2. Is being a Jedi Master that stressful, Obi-Wan?
In the Star Wars canon, Episodes III and IV are only 19 years apart in the timeline. At the end of Episode III, Obi-Wan is clearly still a young man in his mid-thirties.
Yet by the time Luke Skywalker comes into the picture, he’s somehow become an old man?
3. Does Howard Stark know the secret of the fountain of youth?
It’s a fair question. If you look at the depiction of Howard Stark in the first Captain America film, he’s clearly in his early thirties.
Yet when Tony and Cap go back in time to 1970 in Avengers: Endgame , nearly 30 years later, Howard has aged maybe a decade?
A similar thing happens with Peggy Carter, who apparently doesn’t age much either.
Between Captain America: The First Avenger and the time travel scene in Avengers: Endgame , she doesn’t look any older than she did in 1942.
4. Are there four timelines on *Friends*?
I only ask because, over the course of the series, Chandler and Rachel meet for the first time at least four different times.
Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, but four times?! That’s just laziness.
5. Why do Harry’s parents look so old?
This just doesn’t make any sense. Harry’s parents were killed when they were only 21 years old at Godric’s Hollow.
So why is it that every single time we either see a picture or a flashback, they look more like they’re middle-aged?
6. Rachel is pregnant for over a year on *Friends*.
You just need to add it up! She’s pregnant for an entire season of Friends which historically takes place over the course of a single calendar year.
I guess Emma just wasn’t ready to face the world quite yet.
Joey also turns 31 before Rachel even turns 30!
Friends is messy when it comes to the age of their characters.
Early on, it’s established that Joey is actually the youngest one in the bunch. Yet somehow, he manages to turn 31 before Rachel even has her 30th!
7. Thomas Teller is the eternal toddler in *Sons Of Anarchy*.
By the time Sons of Anarchy comes to a close, Thomas has been in the picture for close to three years. Yet if you were to look at him, you’d think he was still a baby.
He isn’t even walking by the end of the show.
8. Don’t cross the streams! Wait, ok nevermind…
This was just plain lazy. Egon had already said that crossing the streams could and would have catastrophic consequences.
Yet somehow, that logic is completely thrown out the window as soon as they have to face the marshmallow man? I don’t get it.
9. Just how exactly do Mystique and Professor Xavier know one another?
So if X-Men: First Class is a prequel to the entire X-Men series, wouldn’t Professor X and Mystique have said somewhere along the way in the first film “Oh, hey! I know that guy!”
And how did he actually become paralyzed?
We’re given two completely contradicting storylines. In X-Men: The Last Stand , we actually see that Charles Xavier is able to walk.
Yet in X-Men: First Class , he becomes paralyzed after a stray bullet severs his spinal cord.
10. Turk and JD’s first meeting is hazy at best.
In season two of Scrubs , Turk recalls walking into his dorm room to meet a very nerdy JD for the first time.
However, in the fourth season when JD is telling the tale, it’s somehow flipped around and he was the one who walked into the dorm — not Turk.
11. Biff breaks the cardinal rule of time travel.
As was established in the first film, when someone goes back in time and changes something in the past, the rest of the world goes on living as if nothing ever happened. It simply becomes their reality.
How, then, in Back to the Future Part II , do both Doc and Marty have no recollection of the new timeline?
Furthermore, technically Biff going back in time is a complete paradox.
One of the consequences of Biff going back in time with the Sports Almanac is that Doc Brown becomes committed to an insane asylum.
If that were true, then he wouldn’t have been able to build the time machine in the first place. So how did Biff manage to time travel at all?
12. Donna’s diary seems to be mistaken in *Mamma Mia!*
Donna writes in her diary that she slept with Sam first in Mamma Mia! But in the sequel, the flashbacks actually reveal that she slept with Sam only after first meeting Harry and Bill.
Which one is it?!
13. The pregnancy of Haley in *One Tree Hill* is off.
Her pregnancy doesn’t last a full nine months. In fact, it’s much shorter.
Haley finds out about the baby at the end of season three, which takes place a few episodes after the school shooting (which was in either January or March). She gives birth on graduation, which is before summer vacation.
So even if the school shooting happened in January, that’s only five months of being pregnant.
It’s possible that she didn’t know about it beforehand, but who doesn’t show even a little for an entire four months?
14. *The Vampire Diaries* characters go to school…too much?
In season three, episode six, the characters make quite a show of going to start their school year.
But there’s also a big return to school for their senior year in season four, and at that point, a lot of time has passed between seasons, including Christmas.
15. *Pretty Little Liars* doesn’t understand seasons.
In season three, the group starts their senior year, and even have a Halloween episode. But Christmas doesn’t happen until season five.
By this logic, it took two seasons for two months to happen.
16. When did Joey become part of *Friends*?
In one of the flashbacks, we can see that Joey moves into Chandler’s apartment in 1993, but weirdly, he is seen at a Thanksgiving with them in 1992.
Did the writers just forget about it?
17. How old are the twins?
After Alaric has twins with Jo, there is a three-year time jump from their birth to their first appearance.
But the twins appear to be a lot older than three years old. They look and act like they are at least six years old!
18. Kaitlin Cooper’s age.
Kaitlin Cooper appears very briefly in the first season of The O.C. , and only returns in season three of the show.
In the first season, she’s a child but suddenly, two seasons later, she’s a teenager.
Last Updated on June 26, 2020 by Jordan Claes
